


Drowning in a Vermillion Ocean

by Yumpinyohanna



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon Compliant, Character Death, Hurt, Hurt No Comfort, I Made Myself Cry, M/M, Modern Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan, POV Armin Arlert, Playlist, Sad, Sad Ending, Shingeki no Kyojin Chapter 136: Devote Your Hearts Spoilers, Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan Manga Spoilers, Spoilers, Vague Feelings, sad not happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-12
Updated: 2021-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-20 12:41:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30005046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yumpinyohanna/pseuds/Yumpinyohanna
Summary: Eren, why did you save me if you knew this was to come, why are you so cruel to me.Sorrow racked his body as through a thousand spears had punctured his chest. He desperately whispered out “Please,…Eren”Suddenly Armin felt a soft brush of skin against his cheek. He looked up to see Eren crouched next to him on the ground gently holding his face in his calloused palm. Armin studied the ridges along his palm. Long lines ending in broken, jagged dead ends. Armin remembered being told once upon a time that they represented the lifeline of their beholder. How appropriate those jagged edges were, how many more would they cut to pieces before they died out. Armin was stirred from his thoughts by Eren’s voice above him. Except it wasn’t Eren’s voice. It echoed out from the vastness like a beehive buzzing all as one.“All will be as it should.”
Relationships: Armin Arlert/Eren Yeager
Comments: 7
Kudos: 45





	Drowning in a Vermillion Ocean

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first fanfic so please let me know your thoughts and if anyone likes it maybe I will write more. This was 100% inspired by a pieve of art created by lauren.e.art on Instagram so please check her work out! 
> 
> I have two playlist suggestions for reading this fic. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCSV5GyieFw gotta hit them with the classics. However, if you would like to make yourself cry even more I have also created a super angst Mitski playlist to go along. 
> 
> Cop Car  
> A Horse named Cold Air  
> Pink in the Night  
> A Pearl
> 
> I wrote this to cope with all of my feelings from 138 so please cry along side me.

Drowning in a Vermillion Sea

The path stretched out before Armin like an endless sea, the blood flowing connection of all Eldians. Yet here Armin felt nothing but separation. Separation from his body, his comrades, the man he once believed to be his best friend. The pain still constricted in his chest as the memories from his and Mikasa’s last meeting with Eren played behind his eyes. He absentmindedly rubbed at his jaw. He sat defeated next to his vacant body. Useless as always, a burden to humanity and his friends. He wondered if any of them were even still capable of taking another breath.

Not Sasha, not Hange, not Erwin. At the mention of the last one he grasped the bo-lo tie hanging around his neck, useless. They would ever again taste the sweetness carried on the wind during the spring, never again feel the rush of adrenaline as they flew through the trees. Memories of bright, green eyes filled with determination and a fire that burned brighter than any great flaming lake Armin could ever conjure within his mind.

Tears swam across his eyes as he gripped the sand covering the ground around him. If only he was stronger, if only he could have given up on Eren before any of this had ever happened. Maybe then they would be alive, maybe men, women, and children wouldn’t have been slaughtered before his eyes. But least he forget he had taken part in the bloodshed and suffering. He slumped further into the sand defeated.

_Eren… why are you doing this…Eren_.

His anger and tears could be damned by his own self-control no longer. He stood and gripped the grains of sand in his fist feeling the course structure grind against his sweating palms. He was done being weak. Words were always his strong suit, and at the moment they were also his only option.

“Eren!” he screamed into the void. “Eren, you son of a bitch. Show yourself to me!”

He stood up and began to walk towards the brightness centered within the vast sand dunes

“Own up to your actions for once in your damn life! The least you could do is face me, I thought…” His voice faltered “I thought I meant something to you.”

He knelt to the ground defeated and broken far beyond repair from the wounds festering within his soul. Once upon a time he thought he had understood Eren more than anyone, even Mikasa. The realization that he no longer recognized him felt like being torn apart from the inside out. A searing pain like being burned alive.

Armin smiled at that idea and thought to himself _If anyone knows that feeling it should be me_.

That’s when Armin noticed the shadow hovering in the sand a few feet from him.

Armin looked up startling him out of his own pitiful thoughts. His heart caught in his throat as his eyes connected with that of brilliant green, or they were once brilliant, they were now dull and as lifeless as humanity was soon to be…if they weren’t already. Eren said nothing he simply stood there and stared, face devoid of any emotions

_Not even a hello, not an explanation for why you have done this_.

Armin’s ager flared as he looked up through blurry glass like eyes at the man he would once have given his life to protect. He still would, but he wasn’t ready to admit that to himself.

“What, no hello for your best friend” Armin strained through clenched teeth.

He was trying to bait him into a fight, he knew that, but he would give anything to see any emotion, joy or hatred flow across his face again. Eren said nothing but looked down at him with those eyes, far more distant than wherever the souls of their lost comrades resided.

Armin remembered the days they would spend working on the railroads, Eren’s bright smile. His hair beginning to grow out and falling into his face causing him to stumble over the most mundane of objects. Armin had teased him and not long after decided to cut his own hair for similar reasons. The hearty bell of Eren laughter… the memories made him wish he had never lived to see what that boy had become. A sob escaped Armin’s lips as he clutched at his dismantled heart through his shirt.

In truth that Eren had already begun to disappear during that time. Armin was too afraid to acknowledge it though, too afraid to notice the change in him. He heard his laugh less often saw that spark in his eyes less. He had become so foreign to him he barely recognized him some days.

_Eren, why did you save me if you knew this was to come, why are you so cruel to me._

Sorrow racked his body as through a thousand spears had punctured his chest. He desperately whispered out “Please,…Eren”

Suddenly Armin felt a soft brush of skin against his cheek. He looked up to see Eren crouched next to him on the ground gently holding his face in his calloused palm. Armin studied the ridges along his palm. Long lines ending in broken, jagged dead ends. Armin remembered being told once upon a time that they represented the lifeline of their beholder. How appropriate those jagged edges were, how many more would they cut to pieces before they died out. Armin was stirred from his thoughts by Eren’s voice above him. Except it wasn’t Eren’s voice. It echoed out from the vastness like a beehive buzzing all as one.

“All will be as it should.”

Eren wasn’t even looking at him, his eyes focused on something far off in the distance. It was as if Armin didn’t even exist to him. Armin grit his teeth as the truth came to him. Eren didn’t care about what happened to any of them as long as he continued moving forward.

_You foolish, foolish boy_ Armin chided in his mind. _If only you could have been happy in the moment. You just had to look to the next best thing. We were never enough for you…we are pawns for your game._

“Why” Armin hadn’t planned to scream it, but he had. He gripped Eren’s shoulders hard enough to bruise. “Why are you doing this! Tell me! Where have you gone Eren! Why did you leave me behind?” Armin realized his words were coming out as a mixture of screams and sobs. He couldn’t even recognize his own voice.

Eren just continued to look forward, to a future none of them would be a part of. A future that was worth more than all of their lives. A future worth more than years of friendship and hands strained red with enough blood to fill an ocean.

Eren suddenly stood from where Armin was still clutching his shoulders. Easily brushing off the other man’s hands. He uttered a simple “It is time.” And began to walk towards the glowing light within the center of the vast plains of sand as though an imaginary master had called him to them.

A sudden panic overtook Armin as he watched Eren walk towards the light. A deep unsettling which started in his head and was soon vibrating through his bones with an urgency that told him this would be the last time.

Armin sprung to his feet and began to race to close the distance between him and Eren. Something told Armin that once the light engulfed Eren he would never be able to find his friend again. The fact stirred something worse than panic inside him, worse than the sorrow of death. It felt as if a piece of him would be lost along with Eren. He was screaming Eren’s name at the top if his lungs trying to slow him if just for a moment. He never looked back.

“Eren! Please stop! Don’t do this.”

His lungs screamed for air as he closed the distance between them determined to save his friend no matter the cost. A repayment for the many times Eren had saved his own miserable excuse of a life.

_You are cruel Eren_.

Eren had reached the light by now. Everything in Armin begged him to leave nothing left unsaid because this was _the last time_. Tears stung his eyes as he reached out for Eren, all of the pain and suffering he had caused pushed aside. How many times had Eren reached for his as they survived yet another day of hell on earth. Armin had been ripped apart, he was now nothing, but flesh splayed out to be forgotten in the blistering sun. “Eren, please don’t leave me…I…I love you.”

Armin didn’t even register what he had said at first. His brain a buzz with every emotion and thought he needed to express before Eren disappeared from him forever. All the days that would never be now, all the years to come spent alone, only death would be his final peace. But he would live without this regret, the regret of things left unsaid for far too long.

Armin was awaiting the sting of abandonment when we felt a familiar palm stretch across his cheek and wipe at the tears freely flowing from his eyes. He looked up and gasped as vermillion met sky. Eren was staring down at him softly, but it wasn’t just Eren. It was his Eren, his Eren that was all fire and hope for a better future, the Eren that had sacrificed his own life for him more times than should have been possible had they been born to normal lives and normal families. Armin sobbed as he placed his hand on top of Eren’s silently begging him to stay, this Eren though, not the one that was responsible for the blood soaking into the earth from those already dead.

“Please, stop this, it’s wrong. Remember how hard we fought to stay alive. How hard we worked trying to make the world a better place. Remember…remember the ocean.” He didn’t know if Eren had even heard him. His voice nothing more than a ragged whisper now.

Before he knew what was happening Eren reached forward and gently brushed his lips against his own. Armin thought he knew the feeling of being torn apart, he was wrong. This was far more painful than being burned alive. This was like being reborn over and over only to suffer the same violent fate on a continues loop for all eternity.

How many times had a secretly wished for this moment, how many times had he buried these feelings knowing that they could be crushed any moment by the world in which they inhabited. How many times had he hoped that his love would be returned.

But not like this…

All too soon Eren moved away from his still tingling lips and moved to his ear whispering his final words as though they were a prayer. Armin was still trying to process the information when he felt Eren’s presence ripped from him and the light around them became blinding.

_No, he wasn’t ready yet, he would never be ready._

He screamed Eren’s name a final time reaching out for him desperately.

_Not yet, I’m not ready to live without you_.

Eren simply returned a soft, sorrowful smile as the light completely engulfed him leaving Armin alone to scream until his lungs felt as though he was gasping for air under water.

Armin woke up confused and afraid. It took a moment for him to collect himself and his surroundings. He held his head looking at the ground below him. Suddenly he realized he was sitting atop cold hard earth, not sand. He looked up head spinning as he remembered the previous moments and what had felt like an eternity ago. He looked around searching for him.

“Eren!” he screamed out desperate to find him, yet there was a wrongness in the air, the smell of iron and ash hung heavy in the wind. He was about to call out again when he saw them.

Mikasa sitting on the ground surrounded by blood. She was clutching something as though it was a raft amidst a violent ocean. His heart stopped, in her lap lay Eren’s disembodied head. Emerald eyes vacant and starring off into the nothingness that was the afterlife. Armin stared in advent horror as those eyes appeared to follow his though now there was no life left behind them.

He took his head into his hands and felt the pieces of his mind come undone by the seams with the events and horrors he had witness the past 19 years. His mind and body a temple to grief.

The screams were what finally brought him back from his memories where the boy with the vermillion eyes still lived. He had never heard screams like these, they sounded inhuman, as if an animal were being skinned alive.

_Poor Mikasa she must be in so much pain, she cannot help her screams_.

He looked up from where he had been drowning in the storm of his own memories and realized he was the one screaming.

_“You were my ocean”_

**Author's Note:**

> I just want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has read my story and left sweet comments and kudos! I’m so grateful to have had any feedback. So thank you all for the inspiration ❤️


End file.
